Bright Challenge
by antepathy
Summary: Wing confronts Dai Atlas after Drift's betrayal.    Wing, Dai Atlas


PG  
>IDW<br>Wing/Dai Atlas, Drift  
><em>Drift<em> miniseries, mid-issue 3  
>For <span><strong>tf_rare_pairing<strong> Wing/Dai Atlas 'challenging authority'  
>AN Just prior to this, in canon, Drift has had a sudden attack of conscience and told the assembled Circle that the Slavers are coming and that he has sold them out for his own freedom. Originally posted on LJ 16 Jan 2011

"Leave," Dai Atlas waved one white hand at Drift, as though he were so much dust to be brushed away. "The Circle has things to discuss."

"Let him stay," Wing said. "He has as much right to be here as any of us."

Drift shifted, uncertain. He barely knew what he was doing by warning them at all, honestly. Some ridiculous impulse welling out of nowhere. And when he looked at Dai Atlas's amber optics, he didn't care what happened to him. Or anyone else in New Crystal City. They could die, for all he cared. Just…not Wing.

And that realization struck him like a hammerblow to the chassis.

"He's not a Knight," Dai Atlas said, wheeling to face Wing. "He doesn't belong. He's never belonged here."

Drift's fists closed. Wing tilted his head in the tiniest admonishment, holding him back. "Are Knights the only ones worthy of protection? What about the citizens who haven't chosen that path?"

"That's whom we serve," Dai Atlast returned. "That's whom we protect."

Wing stepped back one foot, taking up a combat position, his limbs, as always, loose and easy. Looking entirely in his element, optics focused and clear. "And how does one deserve such protection, if Drift does not?"

"Drift," Dai Atlas spat the name, "betrayed our presence. He would sell us all for his own freedom."

"And what have we sold for ours?" Wing's gaze swept over the assembled mechs. He stepped toward them. "We hide underground, and say that we believe in freedom. We call ourselves the Circle of Light, but we bury ourselves in darkness."

A groan from one of the mechs behind Drift. "Not this again."

Drift turned, optics harsh. Whoever it was silenced himself. Drift felt a dull anger begin to throb in his chassis. It was he they should be angry at. He was the one who had betrayed them. Not Wing.

"Yes," Wing said, voice resonant with passion. "This. Again."

"Wing," Drift said. "I'll…go."

"No," Wing said. "You're one of us. You stay." He looked around, in challenge.

"I'm not one of you. He's right." Drift didn't like this feeling: someone else fighting his own fights. And he knew how he would have solved this in Turmoil's command. But he knew enough that he didn't know how they did it in New Crystal City. All he knew is that he hoped he wasn't…that mech anymore.

Wing gifted Drift with one of his smiles, one of the ones so beautiful it hurt to look at. "You might not have a sword, but in every way that matters, you're one of us."

"You do not get to decide," Dai Atlas said. "You're too young. It's all just a game to you."

"To me?" The golden optics flared. "I am the only one who has gone on the surface. I am the only one who has had to fight, to kill, since we settled this city."

"We do not kill," Dai Atlas said, with a weight of judgment like stone in his voice.

"Even to protect?" Wing challenged, and for the first time his posture was tense, his shoulders hitching. Gone was the loose comfort Drift knew. This was something Drift had never seen, not during the attack on the Slaver ship, and not since. This, he thought, was something essential, some core that Wing held precious.

"Paradox," Dai Atlas spat back. "We fell for that before, and it tore Cybertron apart. That's what we fled from, and we swore not to remake that ruin here." His optics clouded orange with memory. "We do not kill."

"Even if not killing means enslavement?" Wing cocked his head, light glossing over his white and red frame, vivid, sharp, almost too bright for the chamber. "What's the opposite of what we fight for? Death or enslavement?"

Weakness, Drift answered. The opposite of what he fought for was weakness. What he'd been fighting for—what he'd been fighting against—his whole life. Drift wanted to leave, to get away, to plan, but suddenly, it was as if his feet had been magnetized to the floor. He could not leave Wing. There was something in Wing's words, in his posture, that he could not abandon.

"We are for peace, and there are ways to fight for it that do not involve violence."

"Then why these?" Wing tapped the hilt that rose behind his head, the massive metal haft of his Great Sword. "What do we need this for?"

"Symbolism," Dai Atlas said. "Which is why we never draw them. The weight of responsibility."

"Weight?" Wing laughed and the sound echoed through the chamber. "Then why not carry a stone?" He swung one of his smaller blades out of its sheath, the blade slicing ribbons in the air in a fluid arc, one of the defensive forms he had shown Drift. Beautiful and lethal. And when Drift had seen it he had wanted it, wanted that skill, more than he'd wanted anything in his life. True power, extending from the self, powered not by hunger or greed or anger or fear but from the lambent flame of idealism. Of…hope.

"The Great Sword is a power too large to be taken lightly." Dai Atlas frowned. "Those who have never seen true war imagine it as it is not."

"I do not imagine," Wing said. "I've seen the world above us, walked in it. How many of you can say the same?"

Some of the other Knights stirred, discomfited at last.

"And you have brought its poison to taint us," Dai Atlas said, pointing a hard finger at Drift.

"I've seen war," Drift spoke up, taking the scorn in Dai Atlas's voice as his due. He was at fault here. Not Wing. All Wing had done was trust...too much. Which was Wing's mistake, but somehow burned caustic in Drift's mind. He ducked his head down, as if bracing for an attack. "I don't have to imagine."

"And you have brought it to our threshold!" The golden crest seemed to target him accusingly.

"Yes." Drift's optics flicked at Wing, worried what the other mech might think of him, if he regretted his pledge, if he hated Drift. He had sworn Drift would bring no harm to the city, and Drift had proven him a liar. Fine time to think of that now, Drift. "And I know that we're wasting time." He didn't have Wing's idealism or his skill with words. But he knew combat. "I didn't warn you so you could tear yourselves apart for them," he said. "I thought, I thought you would protect yourselves, at least." He met Dai Atlas's gaze, optics alive with some unfamiliar emotion. "_I_ don't need your protection." He turned on his heel, feeling the gazes fall on him with all the crushing weight of judgment. Not fleeing, he told himself. Setting up the next battlefield. The one that matters.

Wing stepped to the door, a swordsman's sideways sidle, as if protecting Drift's retreat. "Your tainted poison," he said, and though his voice was quiet, it managed to cut through the mumbling that had followed Drift's departure like a wake, "sees more clearly than we do. We should put our ideals into practice or else all our hiding underground has done is warped our tree at the roots." He gave a lopsided smile. "If any of you even remember trees."

"Wing," Dai Atlas said. He shook his head, exhausted, tired of the challenge. He'd hated war, had grown to hate it through too long and too intimate acquaintance. He did not want to visit the lessons he had learned upon others, the bright hope of New Crystal City. Their innocence was what he protected. That was what would save the Circle. Not bloodshed. "You do not lead here."

"No," Wing said. "I don't. But even the great Dai Atlas would not refuse me the Knight's honor to choose to fight alongside his friend."

Words died in Dai Atlas's throat. He knew, with a veteran's sure knowledge, what would happen. And he knew himself powerless to stop it. And he saw Wing read the trouble and despair on his face, and ache and yet still stand firm against him.

Dai Atlas stepped in closer, resting, he felt for the last time, a hand on Wing's shoulder, along the swell of the nacelle. "Wing," he said, quietly, unable, even at that low volume to keep the quake from his voice. He waited for Wing to call him a coward for it, but Wing merely looked up, uncertain, disarmed by the emotion. "So it can be known, if the worst should happen." He felt Wing stiffen, then relax under his hand. "The name of your Great Sword."

Wing's mouth curled in a shaky smile, and Dai Atlas, looking down, saw the hopeful, youthful faces of every mech he had ever sent to war, burning with hope. This is the way it has to be, he told himself, always. Hope must forge itself, and fall and rise anew. War eats only the young and the brave and the pure and the beautiful.

And Dai Atlas wondered how he had survived so long.

Wing brought one hand up, brushing the beryllium set in the sword's pommel, the fingers stroking it idly, lovingly. "Too Pure for This World." And he smiled a smile of the sun that blazed above them, that Dai Atlas hadn't seen in ages.


End file.
